I like that post, Milos. :)

Frankly I think this is also one of the main reasons why women are not particularly attracted to Wikipedia. There would have to be much more gregariousness and socialising for that to happen (the percentage of women at the movement's social events is always considerably larger than it is online). I guess it's one reason why edit-a-thons manage to attract women: you can actually have a chat and a laugh and a coffee with someone in between edits. It makes it *actually* communal; you interact face to face on a first name basis, not with some screen pseudonym.

The other day someone suggested to me in a chat Wikipedia should have a function like Skype, or IM, so people could chat about stuff privately. I think it's a great idea. (Obviously you would have to make it so people can only instant-message you after you've accepted their contact request.)

At the same time, I have a feeling such a proposal made on wiki would sink like a lead duck. On Wikipedia, having friends and talking to them PRIVATELY on a Wikipedia feature where (shock! horror!) others are EXCLUDED and can't see what you're saying elicits dire fears of "canvassing", "cabal" and other such words (while people still generally accept that it is okay for contributors to have email correspondence, or talk to someone in the pub).

I am not even saying that such fears would be unjustified – the Eastern European Mailing List arbitration case comes to mind – but it is somehow a weird culture. And as Milos says, all of that tends to evaporate when you are actually standing in a corridor at an event, or having your lunch and chatting.

Andreas

On Tue, Dec 8, 2015 at 1:36 PM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:

We are. It's not about particular thread on this list, it's about our existence. Initially I thought it's because the level of our responsibility, but eventually I've realized we are simply boring and nobody bothers about that.

Our meetings and conferences look like the meetings of a regional branch of German Social Democratic Party at the best. In regular occasions they are more like the meetings of a village cell of a communist party from an East European country during the 80s.

This enormous distance between the value of our work and ideals and presenting ourselves to *us* in the range between shiny snake oil merchants and demagogues nobody trusts is quite striking. (OK, there is one more end, thus making a triangle: highly specialized topics which require highly specialized knowledge to participate.)

The distance is also quite striking because the most witty people I ever met are from the Wikimedia movement itself.

It's endemic. From local Wikimedian meetings to Wikimania. The most interesting part of such events is talking with other Wikimedians. Listening talks, lectures and ceremonies is the worst option. Workshops and collective decision making are like gambling: it could be constructive, but it could also be not just wasting time but occult session with the only one goal: to drain the energy from the participants.

On average, I would rather spend two times more time talking with a Wikimedian than listening her or his lecture or talk.

There are some straight forward techniques. For example, we could work on making our talks much better. We could also ask HR professionals how to make our live interaction better.

However, being boring is somehow quite deeply rooted inside of our culture. While trying to become "serious", we lost our ability to be playful. Creativity is something we treat as the least important of our activities.

This is not something which could be fixed quickly. There is no a pill to magically cure it. But we could start thinking about this as a problem and start implementing various ideas to tackle it.

I wouldn't say that our revolution forbids us to dance. (Whenever somebody from Bay Area is DJ-ing, we dance and it's beautiful, no matter how trashy the music is.) But I am sure we can do better. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe

On 8 December 2015 at 13:36, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote: ...

Our meetings and conferences look like the meetings of a regional branch of German Social Democratic Party at the best. In regular occasions they are more like the meetings of a village cell of a communist party from an East European country during the 80s.

Yes, comparing to the SDP is accurate. My experience in leading meetings and making presentations to Wikimedians over many years, is that if you make jokes and lighten things up by being creative, then you run the risk of frequently being taken the wrong way. Sometimes the harsh criticism every time you try something new, feels so negative or obtuse and far outweighs the odd thanks that you get, that it can really put you off volunteering your time.

From trying to make others happy and tick the boxes of the many

multiplying standards and recommendations for our meetings, I stopped making jokes of any kind, frankly my presentations became dull to my eyes. At the moment I have no plans to make any presentations or even take part in meetings in the year ahead. The prospect of starting up again and freely sharing knowledge or experience from my volunteer and programming through planned presentations and workshops does not excite me any more. Instead it now feels like the sort of painful hard work that needs to be paid for.

We actually expect and plan for volunteer burn-outs. It's a shame that the focus is always on attracting new people, and only a fraction of that effort goes into ensuring that our most high impact unpaid volunteers don't crash and burn after a couple of years of flourishing.

Fae